A sold out venue, 17 challenges pitched by the hackathon partners and participants, 5 teams formed in the first evening, turned out to be an interesting outcome. “We ended up by having 8 prototypes presented in the finals,” explained the host, Joao Rei. “It is more likely that we have teams who can't live up to the 48-hour marathon pressure, but the vibe in this event was definitely something different,” he admired the result.

The Future of Mobility inspired teams to come up with many life-changing ideas, starting from Google Analytics for mobility and total costs for society to peer-to-peer ride sharing platform, leaving the jury with a heavy heart. After the deliberations by the experienced jury represented by Mr. Mark Frequin, Vice Minister, the Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management; Ms. Wendela Haringhuizen, Deputy Head of Mission (Baltics), Embassy of the Netherlands in Latvia; Mr. Ton van't Noordende, Business mentor and investor, 01 Ventures; Mr. Raimonds Aleksejenko, Deputy State Secretary, the Ministry of Economics; Mr. Ivo Ālmanis, CMT Lead, Accenture; Mr. Vīgants Radziņš, Business Management Department Director, LMT; Ms. Mari Hanikat, CEO, Garage48; Mr. Andrei Tarasevich, UX/UI designer, Aras Corp - it is an honor to present
the WINNER: NAP1 by Stefan de Konink - Royal Developer, Mari-Liis Kärsten - UX Designer and Rudolph Strelis - Product Strategist. 

“We invited mobility experts from the Netherlands and Latvia to innovate side by side, and the results of the Future of Mobility hackathon exceeded our expectations,” said Mr. Rob Zaagman, Chargé d’Affaires ad interim. “The first and second placed teams have representatives of both countries! We look forward to seeing sustainable smart mobility prototypes evolving into promising cross-border start-ups in the near future!”

“The likes of my peers on LinkedIn are obviously great, but I am looking forward to really change how Latvian citizens are using accurate travel information services. For this to work out, we need to continue with development, the eyes are on us, and certainly, our website is far from finished. To me, this is always the scariest part, of being visible either by winning or writing open source code: knowing that you are not (or never) finished, and being judged solely on this point in time,” explained the winner, Stefan de Konink.

The host Joao Rei added that it was great to see the collaboration between two countries like Latvia and the Netherlands produce such a good outcome. “In the end of the hackathon, Latvia has a tool it didn’t have before. The impact of this event will be felt in the months and years to come, all thanks to the joint efforts of the hardworking hackers”

NAP1 creates a nation-wide open-access data platform with the aim to share various types of mobility data enabling new services to grow.

“As a winner, I felt happy because of multiple reasons. First of all, I have made a bunch of new friends during the hackathon. What we achieved within 48-hours was above expectations. Our team build something that was directly usable by third parties such as Google Maps, Bing Maps, Apple Maps and open source solutions such as OpenTripPlanner. The hackathon also allowed us to build the boilerplate for a white label website to be used by any other national access point. Due to the nature of the idea, interested parties were approaching us during and after the hackathon, with the first business deal a day after winning,” explained Stefan de Konink, developer in the NAP1 team. 

Prizes: Fast track to Accenture Innovation Accelerator; By The Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands - tickets, plane tixs and accommodation to the TNW conference in Amsterdam; tickets to GreenEST Summit 2019; ESPA Riga Spa tickets, Swedbank SWAG, Kluug card holders, 

The 1st runner-up and the favorite of the audience - Sparkz, is increasing sustainable transport such as cycling, walking or public transport in increasing the health of employees, so the company would benefit by lower ill-rates. “Companies stimulate this by offering SPARKZ (awards) to employees, if they use sustainable, healthy transport options,” described the teams business developer Rik Roeske. Sparkz also won the “Greenest idea” award of the Hackathon powered by Tehnopol.

“You are never at home when courier brings you packages. Via plugin in the web store sites you can arrange robotic delivery whenever you want to be at home,” explained the 2nd runner-up Starship 1-click delivery what their idea was about. Starship was also one of the teams who started as one big team, but ended up executing two different ideas during the 48h. In addition, they also developed a marketplace for used items with instant delivery.

Urbanomics - Google Analytics for mobility and total costs for society.

Within the 48h, 8 international teams tried to solve the challenges connected with the future of mobility in Riga, LMT headquarters. “Garage48 is a startup hackathon series turning your idea into a prototype. And we couldn't be happier to execute this conception in Latvia, with partners like LMT and the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands,” said the CEO of Garage48, Mari Hanikat.

The Future of the Mobility hackathon was followed by Techchill conference, where three winning teams participated in the Smart Mobility panel by pitching their ideas into a room full of entrepreneurs, investors and startup enthusiasts, leaving it up to the teams and partners to continue working on the ideas and developing their ideas even further.

We can't thank enough all the mentors: Ton van 't Noordende - 01 Ventures; Gregor Abbas - ANWB; Paul Swaak - Talking Logistics; Arjan Haring - Jheronimus Academy of Data Science; Matias Alvarez Capitaine - Europe Shuttle; Kristjan Jansons - Mindtitan; Ingus Rūķis - tech @ Mapon; Sven Kirsimäe - tech @ Lift99 (former Skype, Pipedrive); Andrei Tarasevich - design @ ArasCorp; Anastasia Begun - design@ Scandiweb; Kaspars Lakševics - Accenture; Lāsma Ivaska - Accenture; Māris Šmits - Accenture

And all the partners and sponsors! We could not have done it without you!